Aw man, I thought this was going to be a steamy golden showers porn. :-( 1 star.

I have to say Leon, when you analyze Tom Hank's pee scenes to this extent, it really takes the piss out of them.

This video was really fascinating. Quite bizarre!

I’m a little surprised that the obvious answer to this little riddle never came up when it is so easy to see in the context of Hanks’ filmography.

What Tom Hanks is known for more than anything else is his tendency to be cast for “everyman” roles. For most of his career, his strength has been - and often still is - to play “just some guy” who got into extraordinary circumstances. To sell such a character, though, the audience has to be able to relate to him. They have to be persuaded to stop seeing the bigtime Hollywood actor who’s cashed 20 million dollars for the performance and start seeing the character as one of their own. Now, what better way to bring the man down to eye level than showing him doing one of the few things that are the very same basic experience no matter who you are, what you have, or where you came from?

Urination is a very basic need. Unlike eating or sleeping, the experience doesn’t really change based on your wealth. Being able to afford a nicer bathroom has minimal impact on the experience of urination, especially if you do so standing up. (And, as we all know, Hollywood is mostly concerned with catering to the male audience most of the time). Taking a piss, if I may be so blunt, is always a little awkward, a little embarrassing and, unless impaired by bad health, quite a relief. This is relatable. We all know what the character experiences at that very moment. This gives us the opportunity to put ourselves into his position.

So I feel confident in saying that Tom Hanks pees because everybody pees.

Replies like this make the episode worthwhile. Thanks for this theory, Creature.

Thanks for the video that inspired it!

yes, thanks for that creature, most people would probably hear someone talk about this and quickly shrug and say "that's gross/awkward" and let it go but creature has probably got it. he pees because everyone pees. why not? and we all know Hanks is one of the most well known actors. i remember in the end credits for the simpsons movie he says "Hi, I'm Tom Hanks, and if you ever see me in public, please leave me be." which i found both funny and sad then guessed that he possibly said that as an ablib in the recording studio. i bet he does get approached a hell of a lot by L.A tourists and he probably thinks to himself "my God...i was just out for a walk." or something of the like.

now i want to go google search for other things Christopher Walken has danced in besides that one fatboy slim video. never heard of that pattern occurring.

Oh my god, I never noticed it before, but like the saying says "Cannot be unseen!" I knew there was a reason I hated Tom Hanks. I always thought it was because he always seems like he's trying SO HARD to seem nice and normal it makes me think he's a closet serial killer (Like Dexter Morgan). Now I guess it's just his crazy watersports fetish.

If you want a somewhat more mundane but still semi-plausible explanation, I suspect it might just have something to do with Hanks' quirky sense of humor & how it plays a (most likely subconscious) role in the scripts he agrees to.

If you've ever seen him on a talk show, (especially Letterman) you know that Hanks has a very strong sense of humor, and that at times it shows a downright bizarre streak. I suspect it's a quirk of his that talking about or depictions of peeing is just one of those things that makes him laugh, and whenever he comes across such a scene in a script he's reviewing, he's amused and it makes him like the script a bit more, just one more thing to help nudge it into the "accept" pile, probably without Hanks even being consciously aware of his reasoning.

I know that the urination scenes can't *all* be added to the scripts at the insistence of Hanks or some twisted Studio Head who can't get get enough of seeing him talking about pee, In the Green Mile & I think maybe also Forrest Gump the urination bits came from the books they were adapted from.

All those people who actually did research and find scenes with Tom Hanks doing #1 is just....wow.

I'll never look at Tom Hanks the same again, well, except when he plays Woody in Toy Story. Woody can't go pee since he's only cotton and plastic.

It's kinda sad that I can name one film that he isn't pissing or talking about pissing.

I did not know that was a thing... I wish I still didn't know that was a thing. :(

Mazes and Monsters.

That has got to be the strangest serious discussion I've heard this year.

What if there is? A genre is defined by the often arbitrary themes recurring in those movies that for some reason get constantly lumped together. If we ask what else is common in the movies that feature a peeing Tom Hanks, and then are able to make the connection between those things and the general theme of urination in other movies, we can easily argue that we have pinpointed a genre. There's always the possibility that film scholars have just failed to make the connection.

Horror movies for example are not about sex, but it is well-know trope that having sex will sign your death sentence. In a similar way peeing might have some underlying meaning in this type of drama. That of course doesn't mean it's intentional. It may be that the idea of having to go just evokes very similar feelings in most people, and when they want to evoke that feeling in the audience they would naturally steer towards the bathroom. After all, what would you replace it with? If asked, could you answer the question "Give me the closest thing to taking a leak that's not taking a leak"? I couldn't.

More likely than anything,its a freakish coincidence. In Stephen King's The Green Mile Paul Edgecombe really suffered from chronic cystitis and in the Winston Groon novel Forest Gump the peeing scene happens when Forest is working as an stunt man in Hollywood (a LOT was changed from the novel).

"in the Winston Groon novel Forest Gump the peeing scene happens when Forest is working as an stunt man in Hollywood (a LOT was changed from the novel)."

If they left out the stuntman needing to pee scene, why put it in the Kennedy scene, if they weren't bent on having a pee (or needing to pee) scene?

Does anyone realize that James Cameron direct motion picture films that starts with A's and T's?
List: Terminator 1 & 2, Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies, Titanic, Avatar

I know he does other works that may not start with a's or t's but you get the idea.

Also another is that his movies become more expensive for every films he directs.

This is very similar to how Brad Pitt likes to eat in his movies. Also I love the theme song for the show

Eating in a scene is an old actor's / director's trick, a bit of "stage business" to bring something else to what would otherwise be just a visually boring scene of two characters standing around exchanging dialog for the sole purpose of moving the plot along. If Pitt's always eating in his films, it suggests he's a bit of a one trick pony when it comes to injecting life into these scenes.

I have to ask, was this research done for other actors? We cannot discount the possibility that this phenomenon is not unique to Tom Hanks and that many other actors of similar profile also have high levels of pee-on-film.

Sometimes, people will see patterns because they've seen them there before or have been told that it's there, but completely fail to notice them if they don't expect them to be there.

In other words, are we sure this is really specific to Tom Hanks?

That's a fair question. There are other actors who have performed in pee scenes. Google "Patches' Place" and "Pee Movie List" for results. I dare not link it directly. Anyway, Hanks' pee scenes are so frequent and in some cases so famous that he stands far above any other mainstream actor in this regard.

I've looked into this quite a bit. There may be someone even more prolific that I missed. There may be some lesser known Laotian actor who has urinated in, say, ELEVEN movies, but if this is true, I am unaware of this hypothetical person.

In short, I researched this as much as I could stomach, and ten is a whole lot. Most actors don't do one. Also, as I said before, this is talked about so much that if, oh, Jonathan Taylor Thomas had significantly more (and more famous) pee scenes, we wouldn't even be discussing Hanks.

Couldn't it just be that Tom Hanks is often typecast as the every man, that the act of urinating is an effective equaliser, it being an act we can all identify with offering familiar conventions and rituals. there is no real stylisation to Tom Hanks peeing, when he does so its very much a mundane undertaking, the codes of which only serve one purpose, to scream, "i am human"

Urinating is mundane and inconsequential, but his urination scenes are not.

- A League of Their Own's pee scene was the most memorable of the film besides "There's no crying in baseball." It lasts a solid minute.

- There were multiple pee scenes in The Green Mile, and his urine was a big part of the plot early on.

- Forrest Gump's "I gotta pee." is in a scene with President Kennedy.

- In Road to Perdition, Hanks being in the bathroom has consequences related to a hitman.

Tom Hanks played himself on the second episode of the mid-90s series, The Naked Truth. In his appearance, Hanks visits the bathroom of a restaurant, but when he comes out, his shirt is stuck poking out of his fly. While the audience didn't perceive Hanks peeing, they are party to the after effects.

Tom "Mr Pee-Alot" Hanks =P

I never noticed that about Hanks, but it makes sense. He tends to play quirky, likable characters. Peeing is kind of quirky because it's something we all do, and yet we're embarrassed by it. In other words, pee is an awkward topic, and Hanks has played awkward characters. At the same time, peeing can be funny or amusing, which I find Hanks to be sometimes. Anyway, that's what comes to my mind.

hmm, now I need to re-watch Bachelor Party and Joe Vs. The Volcano... and maybe even a few episodes of Bosom Buddies to see if he pees in any of them

Here's an unlikely idea: what if Tom Hanks is the only lovable A-list actor to accept urination scenes? It is said that Bill Murray, John Travolta, and Chevy Chase all turned down 'Forrest Gump': what if they all just couldn't picture themselves doing a pee joke, and the part just trickled down to Tom Hanks OH GOD I DIDN'T MEAN TO SAY THAT.

Could it just be that urinating is obviously a common thing most mammals do, and thusly is a coincidence? I mean, especially things like excusing oneself to go to the bathroom, or being in the bathroom when something happened, that's not really a direct reference to urinating.

There was already an article about this. It was on Cracked and it was written in February 24, 2012.

It's called "5 Actors Who Do the Exact Same Thing in Every Movie".